The new Office lets me work from home–and everywhere else

Jen Singer started blogging before anyone had put the words “mom” and “blogger” together. As blogger-in-chief of MommaSaid.net for the past 10 years, she has a unique, expert perspective on how the new Office supports her on-the-go, working mom lifestyle.

I have been working from home since before everyone worked from home at various times during the week. But now my home office can be wherever I am, whether it is in the waiting area at my son’s clarinet lesson, in the high school parking lot, or at the vet, where I am right now. And the new Office is what makes it possible.

As blogger-in-chief of MommaSaid.net for the past 10 years, technology has made it possible for me to work around my kids’ (and when necessary, my cat’s) schedules. I have done pre-show interviews with TV producers from the supermarket cereal aisle and edited books on my laptop while waiting for track practice to end.

But now my office can truly be wherever I am, and it all starts with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud-based storage system. For instance, I started writing this blog post on my desktop in my home office, and then saved it to SkyDrive, put my cat in his carrier, and dashed off to the vet. While waiting for him to have a few tests, I fired up my tablet, pulled this document off SkyDrive, and I am writing it in Word, while listening to a chorus of disgruntled cats.

I can even make changes to contracts and review magazine article edits right on my Windows Phone, which allows me easy access to Office. That means I never have to say, “I’ll take care of it when I get back to my office,” allowing me to get back to the business of coaching soccer practice without worrying about work.

Whether a small business owner like me, or the family manager looking to juggle to-do lists, calendars and homework, there’s an Office for you. Check out Office.com to discover more about the new Office for home or for business. As I’ve said before though, the key is that the new Office makes it possible for me to live and work the way I want. Here are a few things I think you should know about the new Office:

You can load Office 365 Home Premium on up to 5 gadgets for one low price. For families who use Office for managing their households, you can download Office onto your desktop, your laptop, and your tablet, with room for your kids’ computers, all for just $99.99 a year, or $8.34 a month, which is about what people spend to watch old episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix. And updates come automatically, rather than with new rollouts every few years.

It goes wherever I go. As long as I have a compatible phone, laptop, tablet, or access to a computer, I can get whatever I am working on, wherever I am working, by accessing Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and Excel via SkyDrive.

Office has everything I need to be productive. Whether I am writing a book (Word), creating a presentation (PowerPoint), taking notes for a magazine article (OneNote), keeping tabs on my cash flow (Excel), or sending emails to my editors (Outlook), I have everything I need at my fingertips with Office.

Its new features allow me to work smarter. Whether it’s the attachment reminder in Outlook or the threaded comments in Word, the new Office’s features help me get my work done more smoothly–even at the vet.

– Jen Singer

In the past decade, Jen Singer has launched popular blog sites MommaSaid.net and ParentingWithCancer.com and contributed to numerous others, including The New York Times, GoodHousekeeping.com, FamilyCircle.com, The Washington Post’s On Parenting. Join her more than 13,000 Twitter followers at @jensinger.